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PaperclipPerfector  2mo ago (text post)   29557 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 26, 2024

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The depth of the spiritual rot is great enough to be noticed even by its proponents, but that doesn't mean it doesn't just get worse.

The underlying reasons for it are still there, the same talentless politicos are now entrenched in the production hierarchy and they're not giving up their seat.

There is some reason to be optimistic since the financial situation is now such that companies are habitually giving up on DEI and other nonsense aimed at courting activist investment.

I still think the most likely scenario is for some young upstart to poke at the whole rotten carcass of entertainment and collapse it with seemingly no effort. If young George Lucas was around today and managed to get some serious funding, he'd make bank. There's so much money on the table that institutions can't bring themselves to pick up.

What I'm seeing is that it started with (a) die-hard fans who would go see the latest "thing in franchise" no matter what and (b) progressives who would go see it to "own the chuds," and then give it critical acclaim and say that anyone who criticized it was just racist/sexist. But over time the right-wing chuds just stopped even bothering to complain, and the die-hard fans stopped watching. So there wasn't much for the progressive fans to do. It's not fun to watch a crappy movie and pretend you like it if you've got no righteous cause to fuel it.

Also kind of weird that Disney single-handedly controls so much IP. That should be a point of vulnerability. These days all the good stuff is coming from other countries.

These days all the good stuff is coming from other countries.

There are like 5 major countries that make interesting new IPs, The USA, Great Britain (which is so heavily tied with the US they may as well be one "block"), Japan South Korea and China. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_highest-grossing_media_franchises Though really it's mostly Japan and The USA with South korea and china playing second fiddle.

Japan is being hard carried by video games anyway, if we limit ourselves to just television https://www.imdb.com/chart/toptv/?ref_=nv_tvv_250&sort=num_votes%2Cdesc it's almost 90% american/british made stuff. There are a few japanese cartoons in there and a small handful of korean dramas but it's predominantly american made stuff.

Japan is being hard carried by video games anyway, if we limit ourselves to just television https://www.imdb.com/chart/toptv/?ref_=nv_tvv_250&sort=num_votes%2Cdesc it's almost 90% american/british made stuff.

Doubtful a list with GOT in 1st place is of much use for anything. yeah, yeah the first few seasons are decent but if I'm reading the entries right, it comprises all the seasons, including the last one.

Another point against using that list as a comparison point between western series and anime in general is that the premier ranking list of the anime medium is MyAnimeList.net, doubtful you will find representative scores in imdb for anime outside of the overly mainstream series as Attack on Titan.

This isn't sorted by rating, it's sorted by popularity. there are 11 anime in the top 100 on IMDB. Attack on Titan, Death Note, One Piece, Full metal alchemist Brotherhood, One Punch man, Naruto, Demon Slayer, Dragon Ball Z, Cowboy Bebop, Hunter x Hunter, and Jujiutsu Kaisen. Those 11 are also extrmely high in popularity on MAL, main misses would be Sword art online, My hero academia Tokyo ghoul and Stein's gate.

japanese cartoons in there

How was this list generated? Anime is HUGE for young people but its very, very heavily pirated which may limit its appearances in some lists. It's also very often not of the best quality, even if beloved.

It's number of users who gave the show a rating.

Yeah anime's quality is pretty low overall, there's a reason there's a saying "this anime is trash and so am I". Look there aren't many what I'd consider "high class" anime. It's mostly wish fulfillment nonsense with little depth. At the same time you can find your wish fulfillment nonsense. Like me with the saga of tanya the evil and GATE thus the JSDF fought there.

Yeah some of (like barely any) is VERY VERY good, but Anime really hits for a lot of people and has huge cultural penetration.

The percentage of people under age 25 who know who Deku is is probably incredibly high, even in not very nerdy sub cultures, but if you aren't of that age or an anime fan.....not a blob of cultural relevance.

Yeah but for people over the age of 25, many would know about Pokemon, Dragon Ball Z, and Yu-gi-oh. I suspect that many adults (maybe above 5% of americans) would know the name Light Yagami or Eren Yaeger. (I'd definitely bet above 2% and around 10% is probably pushing it).

Pokemon especially is the single largest media franchise on the planet,

Noticed Time had Pikachu and Eevee covers last week.

I don't think I have seen anything noteworthy come out of China since Hero.

But Japanese anime/manga/videogames and Korean dramas/movies/music are definitely viable alternatives to the otherwise dominant American/British/Canadian cultural block.

Thank God.

yeah, I guess liking stuff like Attack on Titan or Death Note instead of House of Cards and Game of thrones does let you get through. (ok the anime I watched recently like Gate thus the JSDF fought there and The saga of tanya the evil are extremely niche shows for a narrow Audience aka me)

I remember that in the TCG sphere we have the "big 3" which is Magic the gathering, pokemon and Yu-gi-oh. MTG is american but at least the other 2 are Japanese. Pokemon is huge in the videogames sphere and even though the mainline games have been a letdown from a main storyline perspective, the side-parts have gotten a lot better.

I just await the time when high school dxd hits the mainstream and everyone freaks out about japan poisoning our youth.

"highest grossing media franchises" isn't a good way to judge art, IMO. It might be cliche, but I still like French movies, even though they don't gross so much. Also Italy (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfect_Strangers_(2016_film)), Mexico (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bardo,_False_Chronicle_of_a_Handful_of_Truths), and... Uganda...!? (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who_Killed_Captain_Alex%3F)

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